Summary
Dr James A Bull is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Reader in Synthetic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry.
Dr Bull’s research focuses on the development of efficient synthetic and catalytic methods to access novel structural motifs and heterocycles of interest in drug discovery.
Group News and OPPORTUNITIES
James is awarded the 2021 AstraZeneca Prize for Synthetic Chemistry, as covered in this Chemistry World article.
- See our latest work on oxetanes, forming aminooxetanes from oxetane sulfonyl fluorides: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41557-021-00856-2
- For an open access link to our latest work on heterocycle C-H functionalisation.
- For our work using oxetanes in dioxane synthesis
- For copper mediated C-H sulfonylation using a transient directing group
- For our latest work making enantioenriched sulfoximines using sulfonimidoyl fluorides which is featured in the Chem Comm 2022 Pioneering Investigators collection
For group news, see: @jamesabull and @jamesabull@mas.to
Biographical details
James Bull graduated from the University of Cambridge in 2001 with a First Class Honours MSci degree in Natural Sciences, Chemistry and the Raphael Prize for Organic Chemistry. He then spent a year working at GlaxoSmithKline Stevenage as a Research Scientist in the Medicinal Chemistry Department.
He returned to Cambridge in 2003 to undertake PhD research with Professor Steven V Ley. He completed the total synthesis of bisoxazole antifungal natural product bengazole A and analogues.
In 2007 he joined the group of Professor André B. Charette as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Université de Montréal, Canada. Here he developed an intramolecular Simmons-Smith cyclopropanation reaction.
In 2009 he began independent research at Imperial College London as a Ramsay Memorial Research Fellow (2009-2011), working in the laboratories of Professor Alan Armstrong. From 2011 to 2015 Dr Bull held an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship on "Novel strategies to access chiral heterocycles as potential lead compounds in drug discovery". In January 2016 Dr Bull started a Royal Society University Research Fellowship.
JB was awarded RSC/BMOS Young Investigator Award (2015), Eli Lilly OIDD Award for Outstanding Contribution to Compound Screening (2015), Thieme Chemistry Journal Award (2016), and the AstraZeneca Prize in Synthetic Chemistry (2021).
Publications
Journals
Rojas JJ, Bull J, 2023, Oxetanes in drug discovery campaigns, Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, ISSN:0022-2623
Antermite D, White A, Casarrubios L, et al., 2023, On the mechanism and selectivity of palladium catalyzed C(sp3)–H arylation of pyrrolidines and piperidines at unactivated C4 positions: discovery of an improved dimethylamino-quinoline amide directing group, Acs Catalysis, Vol:13, ISSN:2155-5435, Pages:9597-9615
Saejong P, Rojas JJ, Denis C, et al., 2023, Synthesis of oxetane and azetidine ethers as ester isosteres by Brønsted acid catalysed alkylation of alcohols with 3-aryl-oxetanols and 3-aryl-azetidinols, Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry, Vol:21, ISSN:1477-0520, Pages:5553-5559
Higham J, Ma T, Bull J, 2023, Dual copper and aldehyde catalyzed transient C-H sulfonylation of benzylamines, Organic Letters, Vol:25, ISSN:1523-7052, Pages:5285-5290
Dubois M, Rojas J, Broderick H, et al., 2023, Visible light photoredox-catalyzed decarboxylative alkylation of 3-aryl-oxetanes and azetidines via benzylic tertiary radicals and implications of benzylic radical stability, Journal of Organic Chemistry, Vol:88, ISSN:0022-3263, Pages:6476-6488